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This week I have had to close the door on a project – a group of people I was endeavouring to serve who did not want to be served. The logic was in my favour, of course! This group needed what I have to offer but did not want it enough to explore the potential for them. This leads to a post mortum and I revisited my values to determine how they are aligned with what I am offering and how can I present my offering better?

I believe that like attracts like, and the values I project will attract people with similar values and though I am happy with my values I did conclude that my presentation could be sharpened up. Stop occupying my mind with what would be right (smart and intelligent) to say next and listen totally to what people are saying, not only before opening my mouth but even before thinking of how to respond.

I now have secured a meeting with another group and I will listen to their story, what hero’s journey they are facing and then .. well, I’ll have to do the listening first!

When I was asked to write and article for a local publication on the theme of “Back to School” I thought I wouldn’t have anything to say.

In my youth “Back to School” was associated with back to learning in a classroom as distinct from passing the holidays doing exactly what you wanted without the restrictions of an imposed timetable.

I now realise that my learning continued outside the classroom, as life experience, with subjects in which I was interested and wanted to learn.

When I grew up and went out to work I discovered that a job was just like school, holidays when you did what you wanted and work when you did as you were told, otherwise you didn’t get your pocket money! Some people work out what they love to do and manage to find someone to pay them to do it. Most of us fall into the 40-year career trap and retire, if we can afford to, when it’s often too late to realise the dreams of our youth.

Being made redundant, once I got over the initial panic, was a stroke of luck. I was of an age that the probability of finding a regular job was remote so self-employment was the only realistic option to maintain a decent lifestyle.

Starting my own business with a network marketing company was a massive learning curve, far greater than any “back to school” experience. It gave me the opportunity to work out what I really want to do with my life (beyond the money) and why it is important to me to achieve it.

I now help other people work out their “what” and “why” and with a network marketing business I can offer a solution for delivering their dream. My success comes from others being successful. Nothing could be more satisfying.

The business itself becomes secondary; it is the vehicle for achieving the dream. Like they say with holidays, you buy the destination, not the plane.

This week has found me revisiting earlier material and re-evaluating my DMP and PPNs. I have not made any changes but I find that I have been able to put them into context with “Why?” – why do I do what I do? Why do I pursue Legacy and Liberty? What has stopped me doing this before and what is making me hesitate even now?

Events combined to give me a breakthrough. Haanel’s chapter this week is on the subject of success. I re-read Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”, highly recommended if you haven’t already come across it. I also listened to a video interview on one of the websites I follow that was on the subject of fear of success.

Fear of success? Who could possibly be afraid of success? Never understood that until … a memory from the deep recesses of the old blueprint replayed in front of me. When I was 19 I joined a bank and set my sights on the General Manager’s job and for several years did all the right things – made a (small) name for myself by passing the requisite exams in record time, made myself useful, etc. One day I realised that the General Manager job, which came with all the glossy benefits (house with swimming pool and tennis court, chauffeured car, seemingly unlimited expenses), also demanded 100% devotion. All leisure activities (golf, Sunday bar-b-q, etc.) involved bank people. bank clients, bank everything. I made a decision, though not then articulated in these words, that if success meant not having the freedom to choose my own friends and (at least some of) my own leisure activities then all bets were off.

This was a subconscious, not a conscious, decision but I can now see, thanks to 20-20 hindsight, that it informed my subsequent career decisions and choices. I was still what many would call successful, reaching a top position within a specialised discipline. I could choose my friends and leisure activities but I had effectively compromised my true potential. I had defined success as a negative, something that would prevent freedom to choose.

OK, this is a short version of the machinations that have been occupying my little grey cells. I now recognise that success in my business will increase Liberty and Legacy and choices in my life and have added some appropriate affirmations to my 3 x 5 cards .

I can still feel the weight lifting from my shoulders. I guess the change will take a little while to get used to. This revelation alone has made my MKMMA experience worthwhile.

Throughout this MKMMA experience one feature that has held my fascination throughout is the way all the segments come together – Haanel, Og, Emerson, et al – and stimulate firing and wiring in the little grey cells.

For example: Emerson, in “Self-Reliance”, talks about the virtue that most seek out is conformity. Haanel (in lesson 23) talks about the docile attitude of the majority who let other people do their thinking for them.

I also like Haanel, in writing about “We get what we give”, might have had network marketing in mind when he says: “We make money by making friends, and we enlarge our circle of friends by making money for them, by helping them, by being of service to them”.

In the UK we are presently bombarded by politicians in pre-election campaign mode. The trouble is they and their manifestos all come out looking the same dull, uniform grey. “Fifty Shades of Grey” might give us something to talk about! Emerson has them summed up: “This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true”.

The notion of a comfort zone is the biggest excuse for not pursuing our purpose in life and thus reduce our purpose to just a dream. We make up all sorts of “reasons” that we can’t break out of our comfort zone and all these reasons are due to something outside ourselves, outside the comfort zone over which we have no control. Someone or something else has fenced us in.

Since this topic was introduced some three weeks ago it caused a lot of firing, wiring and rewiring amongst my little grey cells. I regard this topic as a lesson in progress and in summarising where I am right now in making sense of it came out far too long for a blog post. I have therefore created a new page entitled “Comfort Zones – Help or Hindrance?” under the Lessons tab for those curious to know what I think about it.

1. Our mental attitude is our personality. Our lives are simple the reflection of our predominant thoughts, our mental attitude. I’d not thought of it quite like that before but it makes perfect sense.

2. If we wish to change “all that is necessary” is to change our thought. Destroy the negatives and create new pictures. I’ve made progress but not found it quite as easy as that implies. In fact I have begun to wonder if we ever totally overwrite our old blueprint. I often have some really old stuff that I’d not thought about in decades bubble up to the surface for no apparent reason. Of course I let it pass and do not dwell on it but that old blueprint is a stubborn old …

3. We learn from physics that big stuff behaves differently from really small (quantum) stuff so I am intrigued to learn that large ideas can eliminate all smaller ideas. I wonder if we are closer to the Theory of Everything than the scientists?

4. We are in a period of transition that is evidenced by the unrest that is apparent everywhere, so observes Haanel in 1916. Not much has changed in the last 100 years then.

5. Haanel appears to conclude that much of our human problems are down to people regarding Cosmic power as non-human and alien to humanity. I think he hits the nail on the head here. Humans tend to regard themselves as separate from nature rather than an integral part of it and have the arrogance to think that we alone can control the rest. Scientist James Lovelock has a lot to say on this subject – his book “A Rough Ride To The Future” is my book of the month.

It’s nice to find that something I worked out for myself is validated by no less that Haanel. When I was first introduced to writing goals the perceived wisdom was to set out a “Have, Do Be” list which I instinctively felt was the wrong way round. Surely you need to work out what/who you want to Be and then Do what you have to do in order to Be before you can Have, the last being incidental to the others.

Haanel of course puts it more eloquently: “We must “be” before we can “do”, and we can “do”only to the extent which we “are”; and what we “are” depends on what we “think” and “feel”.

My challenge this week is getting my head around emotions being used as tools to expand my comfort zone. The Sunday webinar raised the question “What if they were tools?” Can they be tools in the sense of employing them to facilitate expanding the comfort zone? Another “sit” or two required I think. More on this later.

I’ve been pondering this week on why all the change that I am striving for on my Hero’s Journey is sometimes so damn difficult. Why can’t I see it and just move towards it and grasp it. I am inspired for my insight by Robert Kiyosaki’s new book “Second Chance”, which addresses the need to ditch the old blueprint and change the way we think in respect of money, wealth and contribution.

We have become hooked on instant visible change, instant gratification. Think of the many TV makeover shows. Turn an ugly old frog into Prince Charming with a haircut, tooth whitening and a change of outfit. Turn a neglected old house into a dream home with a new kitchen, new bathroom and a fresh coat of paint. These are but external, visible changes. Fine for people who just want to look good on the outside.

However, our Hero’s Journey is about internal, for a long time invisible, changes and it takes more that a coat of paint to effect an internal makeover. As Robert Kiyosaki puts it: “A true second chance (Hero’s Journey) is a metamorphosis, the same type of transformation a caterpillar goes through before emerging as a butterfly. The power to transform from a caterpillar to butterfly is in all human beings … ” (My italics) A caterpillar’s outward appearance gives no hint of the change to come, it’s all going on within.

And all this goes nicely with Haanel’s lesson this week: “We know that every human experience is an effect, so if we may ascertain the cause, and find that this cause is one we can consciously control, the effect – the experience – will be within our control also”.

I can see how easily one could become obsessed with obituaries. Some are better written and more interesting than others but all that make it to the “featured” half page or so in the mainstream press are of truly fascinating achievers. I have read a selection; some people that I knew something about and some people that I’d never heard of before. Of those I thought I knew something about I find that I actually knew very little. Those I’d never heard of have before had in fact contributed so much to this world that I really wish I’d lived with my eyes more open and widened my horizons.

I can’t imagine that any one of them would have wanted to change places with me to have just one more day. My guess is that they lived every day as if it were their last so when their time came they knew that they had accomplished their purpose. Now that is a finale worth living for!

A couple of sentences from Haanel’s Lesson 18 sum up the common thread in these lives:

“The ability to produce is found to be the real source of wealth of the individual. This is why people who have their heart in their work are certain to meet with unbounded success”.